Kuwait said yesterday it had withdrawn an
invitation to Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmud Abbas for a visit to the
emirate because he would not apologize for Yasser Arafatís support of
Iraq for its 1990 invasion. (Come After Apologizing, Abbas Told
)

As a start, the Palestinian leadership never supported the Iraqi
invasion of Kuwait. Actually, Arafat tried to mediate between Kuwaitis and
Iraqis. It was Saddam Hussain's suggestion to link the Iraqi withdrawal
from Kuwait with the Israeli withdrawal from the Arab territories that
attracted the attention. Palestinians were neither responsible for the
invasion nor for the Saddam "linkage." To say anything contrary
is inaccurate at best.

The Kuwaiti government still insists on blaming
the victims. They want the Palestinian Authority to apologize for the
Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. This is an illogical demand. Actually, the
Kuwaiti government should apologize for evicting more than 450,000
Palestinians from the country, in 1991, for no reason other than scoring points
against the Palestinian leadership. The Kuwaiti rudeness led to the death
of Palestinian leader Faisal Al-Hussaini by heart attack during his visit
to Kuwait, in May 2001. He was invited by a group of Kuwaiti activists
during a conference about Jerusalem but he was subjected to rude attacks
in the media and face to face, which contributed to his death alone in his
room in the hotel.

The Palestinian people were not responsible for the failure of
the Iraqi-Kuwaiti relations. Palestinians should not be used as an escape goat
for the Kuwaiti policies that led to the Iraqi invasion in 1990. They have
been suffering enough on the hands of the Israelis and it seems that the
Kuwaiti government insists on joining the Israeli endeavor.

Both governments, after all, have one main thing
in common. They represent the privileged few. While the Israeli government
denies the Palestinian people the Israeli citizenship and refuses to allow
Palestinian refugees to return to their property, the Kuwaiti government
also denied 450,000 Palestinians citizenship and evicted them from the
country after more than half a century of living there. While Israel only allows
Jewish immigrants to become citizens, the Kuwaiti government has denied
citizenship to the vast majority of immigrants in the country.

The Kuwaiti political participation in elections
is still limited to male Kuwaiti citizens, who constitute about 6
percent of the inhabitants of the country. Kuwaiti women are still deprived of
their political rights, so are the Bidoons (residents without citizenship),
and so are immigrants. Thus, out of about two million people living in
Kuwait, only about 100,000 Kuwaiti men can participate in parliamentarian
elections.

For all of that, it is not strange for such a
government to behave in this way. It is the government of the privileged
few who find a special joy in humiliating people and depriving them of
their rights. But it is truly a strange time in which the victims are
asked to apologize to their oppressors.